The Wikipedia bomb

[Darat]

...snip..

Second, I don't remember Wikipedia ever claiming to be the authority that others seem to think it is claiming to be.

See:The Free Encyclopedia

See:Wikipedia is aimed at creating a new kind of encyclopedia that is comprehensive and free for anyone to consult

See:Wikipedia's goal is to create a free, democratic, reliable encyclopedia—actually, the largest encyclopaedia in history, in terms of both breadth and depth

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Overview_FAQ
...snip...

How do you know if the information is correct?
As anyone can edit any article, it is of course possible for biased, out of date, or incorrect information to be posted. However, because there are so many other people reading the articles and monitoring contributions using the Recent Changes page, incorrect information is usually corrected quickly. Thus, the overall accuracy of the encyclopedia is improving all the time as it attracts more and more contributors. You are encouraged to help by correcting articles and passing on your own point of view.

...snip...

Now my source is the Wikipedia itself so of course that text may no longer exist and someone may have decided that the Wikipedia is for use by Teletubbies only to learn how to make custard....

The Wikipedia bashing that seems to be in fashion now comes down to one fundamental bit of advice: Don't believe everything you read. It isn't a new problem.

I suspect the result of your "Wikipedia Bomb" is, at worst, going to be a few high profile people being publicly embarrassed for not checking their facts. It's happened before and it will happen again, with or without Wikipedia.

The root problem is a lack of critical thinking, not a flaw in Wikipedia's model.

No the claim at the moment is that there is flaw with Wikipedia since it is using a mechanism that has never been proved and has purposefully and quite boastfully rejected the techniques of guaranteeing a certain amount of accuracy from an encyclopedia that have already been proved to work (e.g. articles written and reviewed by experts and general peer review). Now granted at the moment that is only a claim since it may well be that it succeeds with its aims to be a comprehensive and reliable encyclopedia and aids another proved technique.

 

[tsg]

See:The Free Encyclopedia

See:Wikipedia is aimed at creating a new kind of encyclopedia that is comprehensive and free for anyone to consult

See:Wikipedia's goal is to create a free, democratic, reliable encyclopedia—actually, the largest encyclopaedia in history, in terms of both breadth and depth

These are simply stating what they are attempting to do ("Wikipedia is aimed at" and "Wikipedia's goal is"), not that they have succeeded in any way.

No the claim at the moment is that there is flaw with Wikipedia since it is using a mechanism that has never been proved and has purposefully and quite boastfully rejected the techniques of guaranteeing a certain amount of accuracy from an encyclopedia that have already been proved to work (e.g. articles written and reviewed by experts and general peer review). Now granted at the moment that is only a claim since it may well be that it succeeds with its aims to be a comprehensive and reliable encyclopedia and aids another proved technique.

Whether they succeed or not my point still stands: Don't believe everything you read. The Wikipedia can be a great resource provided you double check the facts. But that should be standard procedure for any publication. Isn't that what critical thinking means?

Just for the record, I'm not trying to claim that Wikipedia has no responsibility for the accuracy of their articles. Quite the opposite in fact. I don't, however, think the inaccuracies are the transgression to humanity that people are making them out to be.

 

[Darat]

These are simply stating what they are attempting to do ("Wikipedia is aimed at" and "Wikipedia's goal is"), not that they have succeeded in any way.

...snip...

The first is certainly a claim i.e that it is an encyclopedia and according to Wikipedia an encyclopedia is :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia
...snip...

Four major elements define an encyclopedia: its subject matter, its scope, its method of organization, and its method of production.

Encyclopedias can be general, containing articles on topics in many different fields (the English-language Encyclopædia Britannica and German Brockhaus are well-known examples), or they can specialize in a particular field (such as an encyclopedia of medicine, philosophy, or law). There are also encyclopedias that cover a wide variety of topics from a particular cultural, ethnic, or national perspective, such as the Great Soviet Encyclopedia or Encyclopedia Judaica.

Works of encyclopedic scope aim to convey the important accumulated knowledge for their subject domain. Such works have been envisioned and attempted throughout much of human history, but the term encyclopedia was first used to refer to such works in the 16th century. The first general encyclopedias that succeeded in being both authoritative as well as encyclopedic in scope appeared in the 18th century. Every encyclopedic work is, of course, an abridged version of all knowledge, and works vary in the breadth of material and the depth of discussion. The target audience may influence the scope; a children's encyclopedia will be narrower than one for adults.

Some systematic method of organization is essential to making an encyclopedia usable as a work of reference. There have historically been two main methods of organizing printed encyclopedias: the alphabetical method (consisting of a number of separate articles, organised in alphabetical order), or organization by hierarchical categories. The former method is today the most common by far, especially for general works. The fluidity of electronic media, however, allows new possibilities for multiple methods of organization of the same content. Further, electronic media offer previously unimaginable capabilities for search, indexing and cross reference. The epigraph from Horace on the title page of the 18th-century Encyclopédie suggests the importance of the structure of an encyclopedia: "What grace may be added to commonplace matters by the power of order and connection."

As modern multimedia and the information age has evolved, they have had an ever-increasing effect on the collection, verification, summation, and presention of information of all kinds. Projects such as h2g2 and Wikipedia are examples of new forms of the encyclopedia as information retrieval becomes more simple.

...snip...

So that is what Wikipedia is claiming itself to be.

 

[tsg]

The first is certainly a claim i.e that it is an encyclopedia and according to Wikipedia an encyclopedia is :

So that is what Wikipedia is claiming itself to be.

And yet I see nothing saying an encyclopedia is necessarily accurate or should not be questioned.

 

[Darat]

And yet I see nothing saying an encyclopedia is necessarily accurate or should not be questioned.

Which is not the point my quotes and post was answering - you said: "Second, I don't remember Wikipedia ever claiming to be the authority that others seem to think it is claiming to be."". I have shown that Wikipedia itself makes this claim.

 

[tsg]

Which is not the point my quotes and post was answering - you said: "Second, I don't remember Wikipedia ever claiming to be the authority that others seem to think it is claiming to be."". I have shown that Wikipedia itself makes this claim.

I don't think you have. Your point apparently was that their claim to be an encyclopedia somehow translated into a claim of authority. I don't see that. They certainly claim to be striving for reliability but I don't see anything stating they have acheived it.

But let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that the Wikipedia is 100% inaccurate: every word a lie; every claim unsupported; every fact incorrect and unreferenced; every article written with a hidden agenda designed to dupe the public, and that they actively and directly claim to be 100% accurate. So what? How is it any different than any other website purporting to tell the truth and doesn't? Where, in short, is the tragedy? What is the disaster waiting to happen? Whatever it is, the defense is the same: Don't believe everything you read. Use critical thinking. Double-check the facts and don't consider it, or any other source for that matter, as an absolute authority.

I fail to see what makes Wikipedia so different from other publications that it should garner this kind of attention and warrant fear-mongering statements like "Wikipedia is a bomb waiting to go off. It can be only a matter of time." I mean, really, it sounds like the evening news: "What you don't know about Wikipedia can kill you!" Yes, it's worth discussing the merits of the system they use, but let's keep it in proportion, shall we, and not pretend it's the literal end of the world if what a website publishes isn't 100% accurate, especially when we know, going in, that anyone can edit it.

 

[CatOfGrey]

But how do you REALLY know?

It's simple, but requires work. You can't rely on Wikipedia as a single source, just as you shouldn't ever be relying on a single source. When your Wikipedia information reasonably matches your magazine articles and newspapers, and the documentary you saw last night, you can feel better about your conclusions.

 

[rjh01]

Which is not the point my quotes and post was answering - you said: "Second, I don't remember Wikipedia ever claiming to be the authority that others seem to think it is claiming to be."". I have shown that Wikipedia itself makes this claim.

I agree with Tsg. Darat has made a long quote (is this a breech of Jref's rules?) about what an encyclopedia is (this includes being a reference source) and that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. That I do not dispute. However nowhere in the long quote do I see anything that says an encyclopedia cannot be full of rubbish. In fact in one of the quotes Wikipedia says it may contain errors.

Nothing should be accepted as true until you have got it from two reliable independent sources. There is independent evidence posted in Nature that says that Wikipedia is reliable. See my references above for the sources.

 

[Diamond]

I don't think you have. Your point apparently was that their claim to be an encyclopedia somehow translated into a claim of authority. I don't see that. They certainly claim to be striving for reliability but I don't see anything stating they have acheived it.

But let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that the Wikipedia is 100% inaccurate: every word a lie; every claim unsupported; every fact incorrect and unreferenced; every article written with a hidden agenda designed to dupe the public, and that they actively and directly claim to be 100% accurate. So what? How is it any different than any other website purporting to tell the truth and doesn't? Where, in short, is the tragedy? What is the disaster waiting to happen? Whatever it is, the defense is the same: Don't believe everything you read. Use critical thinking. Double-check the facts and don't consider it, or any other source for that matter, as an absolute authority.

I fail to see what makes Wikipedia so different from other publications that it should garner this kind of attention and warrant fear-mongering statements like "Wikipedia is a bomb waiting to go off. It can be only a matter of time." I mean, really, it sounds like the evening news: "What you don't know about Wikipedia can kill you!" Yes, it's worth discussing the merits of the system they use, but let's keep it in proportion, shall we, and not pretend it's the literal end of the world if what a website publishes isn't 100% accurate, especially when we know, going in, that anyone can edit it.

If people did use critical thinking then this site would be redundant. The problem is: where do people go for information that can be trusted?

I don't buy the idea that wikipedia's fallibility is a cause for celebration because its an opportunity to practice critical thinking. People will believe in what wikipedia says, especially if that content comes from another website that they trust.

Rumours are believed and people can die because of conflagrations begun by rumours. Do I need to search the news archives looking for examples?

Wikipedia is wide open to ingenius hoaxer or the malicious psychopath to plant false information that is then transmitted, copied and re-transmitted right around the world. It's a delusion that "Wikipedia's failings don't matter".

I notice most of the articles on wikipedia make factual claims without citation, and wikipedia has such problems that some websites refuse to allow links from wikipedia, which means that broken links are common.

The bomb is that its perfectly possible for someone to create a false historical event or happening, which involves two groups of people already in a tense standoff that could cause one or the other to go over the edge. Audit trails on Wikipedia are worse than useless and articles are not checked prior to publication, but sometime later, a lot later in most cases. Wikipedia is heavily copied, heavily cited and heavily googled giving its encyclopedic references enormous weight amongst ordinary Internet users.

Those fake wikipedia articles will be embedded amongst other articles with the same characteristics of poor or non-existent citations or references given by an anonymous person or persons whose only identity will be an IP address. It's impossible to tell true from fake unless you comb every article with a fine toothcomb of research. And nobody is doing that.

 

[rjh01]

There is nothing in what Diamond says that cannot also be said about any other reference material. Even the best has had junk published in it. After all everything is written by humans and they make mistakes.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

Those fake wikipedia articles will be embedded amongst other articles with the same characteristics of poor or non-existent citations or references given by an anonymous person or persons whose only identity will be an IP address. It's impossible to tell true from fake unless you comb every article with a fine toothcomb of research. And nobody is doing that.

If someone, or some group of people did that, there would probably be similar IP addresses involved. At the least, there would either be IP addresses from the same area (assuming the person or persons are physicall near eachother) or, assuming the poster/conspirators are spread out/well traveled, there would still be many posts from the same few areas. I imagine that good stastical software analyizing IP addresses of posters posting regarding a certain subject against expected values would find that suspect article in the scenario you generated to be several standard devations from the norm.

 

[geni]

Sorry about this: I'm not fixated by Wikipedia, I just tend to follow through subjects to their natural conclusion.

The Wikipedia Bomb

I had another random walk through Wikipedia today, and I noticed something that I hadn't been paying attention to before:

Even some of the longest and most detailed articles made specific claims that could not be checked because there were no references.

Since most of our longest articles are lists that is hardly supriseing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Longpages

I'm willing to bet that there are lots of articles in Wikipedia that refer to famous people who never existed, historical events that never happened, places in the world that don't exist, definitions for words that have been made up, devices that were never invented, artistic works that were never created and so on. All with references to books and literature that don't exist, and to webpages that never were.

How much?


We have ways some o

I'll make my prediction: the next big scandal of Wikipedia will be the discovery of an article containing a plausible story of something that never happened but which people will believe and quote, until someone actually does the background checking. The fake article will actually provoke a real conflagration which will continue even after the hoax has been revealed. The person who does the checking will be disbelieved, because the lie is so compellingly plausible.

This runs into the problem that the article would at the same time have to be high enough profile to be noticed to a reasonable degree outside wikipedia but at the same time not be spoted by much of the internal community.

The historical precedent for this would be "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"

Here you run into the problem that en wikipedia is so big that it includes pretty much every type of person going. the hoax would have to be compelling to a pretty high percentage of cultures on ear includeing furies.

 

[geni]

Darat wrote on skepticsrock:



That's one way to destroy Wikipedia, but if you ran a totalitarian or repressive regime you wouldn't want to be so obvious...you'd want to subvert it slowly, carefully and most of all, plausibly.

It's been tried. It didn't work. We have a lot of tricks avaiblible. Pretty much every form of attack you can think of has been tried at least once. In the last few months I've seen maybe two new types of attack. Both were varations of existing attacks.

 

[tsg]

If people did use critical thinking then this site would be redundant. The problem is: where do people go for information that can be trusted?

The answer is: nowhere. At least, not one single source and that's the point.

I don't buy the idea that wikipedia's fallibility is a cause for celebration because its an opportunity to practice critical thinking. People will believe in what wikipedia says, especially if that content comes from another website that they trust.

People believe a lot of things that aren't true. Most of it comes from sources other than Wikipedia.

Rumours are believed and people can die because of conflagrations begun by rumours. Do I need to search the news archives looking for examples?

Anyone who makes life-threatening decisions based on facts from a single source and doesn't double check them is criminally negligent wherever the information came from. Wikipedia is not unique.

I notice most of the articles on wikipedia make factual claims without citation,

You've read them all, have you? I am impressed.

The bomb is that its perfectly possible for someone to create a false historical event or happening, which involves two groups of people already in a tense standoff that could cause one or the other to go over the edge. Audit trails on Wikipedia are worse than useless and articles are not checked prior to publication, but sometime later, a lot later in most cases. Wikipedia is heavily copied, heavily cited and heavily googled giving its encyclopedic references enormous weight amongst ordinary Internet users.

Now this is just raving lunacy. Wikipedia is in no more danger of causing the above than any other website, especially those that are deliberately misleading the public. One might wonder whether you have a hidden agenda, like the possibility a Free Encyclopedia threatens your livelihood. The phrase "fear, uncertainty and doubt" comes screaming to mind.

Those fake wikipedia articles will be embedded amongst other articles with the same characteristics of poor or non-existent citations or references given by an anonymous person or persons whose only identity will be an IP address. It's impossible to tell true from fake unless you comb every article with a fine toothcomb of research. And nobody is doing that.

It isn't necessary to comb every article, just the ones you are interested in at the time. Double check the facts, as you should do with every article no matter who published it. And, no, another article that cites the one you are investigating, or has no citation at all, does not confirm the article. This is Basic Research 101. The solution is teaching critical thinking, not blowing the problem so out of proportion that you sound like a raving madman conspiracy theorist. There may well be problems with Wikipedia's model. They aren't near as serious as you are making them out to be.

 

[Diamond]

The answer is: nowhere. At least, not one single source and that's the point.

Wrong.

People believe a lot of things that aren't true. Most of it comes from sources other than Wikipedia.

Irrelevant. They are not given the weight that Wikipedia has. People have believed in things that aren't true before Wikipedia came along. But that doesn't stop the possibility that people will have new false things to believe in.

Anyone who makes life-threatening decisions based on facts from a single source and doesn't double check them is criminally negligent wherever the information came from. Wikipedia is not unique.

Which goes back to the first point: double check with what? If you double check with another source whose information was derived from someone who derived information scraped from wikipedia, you might believe that you doubled checked, but you haven't.

Now this is just raving lunacy. Wikipedia is in no more danger of causing the above than any other website, especially those that are deliberately misleading the public. One might wonder whether you have a hidden agenda, like the possibility a Free Encyclopedia threatens your livelihood. The phrase "fear, uncertainty and doubt" comes screaming to mind.

Really? You've made a study of every other website, including the ones that deliberately mislead? I am impressed.

How about this? Perhaps I'm a secret agent for the Wikimedia Foundation trying to induce people to defend Wikipedia by mounting planting obvious lies about Wikipedia which cause more people to check articles in Wikipedia in order to feel more secure about its contents. Double psychology to make people feel safe.

Do you have a hidden agenda? Can you prove you don't?

It isn't necessary to comb every article, just the ones you are interested in at the time. Double check the facts, as you should do with every article no matter who published it. And, no, another article that cites the one you are investigating, or has no citation at all, does not confirm the article. This is Basic Research 101.

If basic research 101 is so obvious, why is the Internet full of myths and urban legends? Why does Randi keep encountering intelligent people at major institutions who believe and disseminate things that aren't so?

The problem with Wikipedia is that you'd need to comb every article 24 hours a day 365 days of the year.

Where will you start? Natasha Demkina, for example?

The solution is teaching critical thinking, not blowing the problem so out of proportion that you sound like a raving madman conspiracy theorist. There may well be problems with Wikipedia's model. They aren't near as serious as you are making them out to be.

Is that before or after the lie has already done its ghastly deed?

I could be doing this to promote FUD in order to promote my own wiki, but how is my own wiki to be trusted? Down the rabbit hole we go....

 

[rjh01]

Of course Diamond is right, no matter how careful you are, you may come to the wrong conclusion. Wikipedia is often a good source of information but it is not 100% right. Then nothing is 100% right. In other words Diamond is agreeing with everyone else. Am I am the only person to see this?

If you reject Wikipedia you must also reject every other source of information. What sources of information does Diamond suggest we rely on?

 

[jj]

It's odd, too, in another forum I had an article withdrawn because I cited a whole set of refereed papers out of IEEE and AES publications, all of them mine.

But this shows the problem with wikipedia. You could make just about anything up about something noncontroversial and very obscure, and nobody would notice.

 

[rjh01]

jj, Yes you could but then nobody would use your information. So what is the point?

 

[Rasmus]

Someone could write articles about non-existing facts? oh my ...

Rasmus,
who would give more examples if only the one he knows and considers funny weren't all German.

 

[Darat]

I don't think you have. Your point apparently was that their claim to be an encyclopedia somehow translated into a claim of authority. I don't see that. They certainly claim to be striving for reliability but I don't see anything stating they have acheived it.

Then why do they call themselves something that today is used to mean somthing that does have an authority e.g. "an encyclopedia". Sorry but they are claiming they have a certain authority if they make the claim they are an encyclopedia.

...snip....

I fail to see what makes Wikipedia so different from other publications that it should garner this kind of attention and warrant fear-mongering statements like "Wikipedia is a bomb waiting to go off. It can be only a matter of time." I mean, really, it sounds like the evening news: "What you don't know about Wikipedia can kill you!" Yes, it's worth discussing the merits of the system they use, but let's keep it in proportion, shall we, and not pretend it's the literal end of the world if what a website publishes isn't 100% accurate, especially when we know, going in, that anyone can edit it.

As I said Wikipedia may provide a successful example of another way to compile an encyclopedia - however at the moment it is still (apparently) a work in progress and the evidence isn't available to see whether it is as accurate as a traditional encyclopedia. Therefore I think since it wants to be known as an encyclopedia (that is what it calls itself) it is wrong that they aren't making it much clearer that they are a work in progress and that their compilation model has not been proved to work (yet?).

It would be great to see the Wikimedia foundation or Wikipedia engaging research to see if their idea does achieve a result comparable to traditional approaches. The only research seems to be this latest finding so at the moment the only evidence is that Wikipedia is not as accurate as a traditionally compiled encyclopedia.